There’s always been talk and rumour about what aids and hinders fertility, but with birth rates declining worldwide, there has been more research into the topic. So, what do some of the latest studies suggest?
Pollution is likley affecting our fertility
The number of children born per woman has halved in the past 60 years, due to a number of factors, many of which boil down to choice. Many people are choosing not to have children, or choosing to wait longer to start a family. However, there is also an increasing number of couples who are wanting to have children but are having serious difficulty conceiving.
There is an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that this progressive loss of fertility is a consequence of the toxins that both men and women are exposed to in modern life. These chemicals can impact our fertility by causing damage to our reproductive systems, impairing the viability of fetuses and causing endocrine disruption. This not only impacts natural conception, but impacts the successful chances of IVF too.
Unfortunately, we cannot always avoid endocrine disruptive chemicals, but we can take some simple steps to reduce exposure to them, including:
• Reducing intake of chemicals by washing fruit and vegetables and buying them from known (local) sources.
• Eating fewer processed or canned foods to reduce intake of BPA and plasticisers that coat the inside of cans/are used in plastic film.
• Avoiding handling sales receipts or keeping them in your wallet. The coating contains BPA which gives them their shiny plastic texture.
• Avoiding drinking water/soft drinks out of soft plastic bottles.
• Avoiding heating food in soft plastic or foil takeaway containers. Instead, place food in a bowl and cover it with a paper towel or plate before heating.
COVID-19 could impact male fertility
We are still discovering more and more about how COVID-19 affects the body, and experts are still looking into how the virus could impact fertility. To date, most studies have focussed on female fertility, however newer studies have started to show that COVID-19 may actually impact male fertility.
Researchers reporting in ACS Omega, ran a pilot study which analyzed protein levels in semen of men who have recovered from COVID-19. The results suggested that even those with mild symptoms from COVID-19 saw changes in the levels of male reproductive proteins.
Additionally, a study of 120 men published in February 2022 in the journal Fertility and Sterility found that 60% of those who had COVID-19 experienced reduced sperm motility in the month following infection, although the virus was not detected in the sperm itself. As this research is still new, experts could not say with certainty how long this dip in fertility lasts, although they predicted around three months.
In regards to female fertility, a study of over 2100 couples, published in January 2022 in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that COVID-19 in women didn’t appear to impair their ability to get pregnant.
Whilst much misinformation was spread about the vaccines and their impacts on fertility, research has shown that vaccines do not impact our ability to conceive. In a study supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), researchers reviewed data from over 2000 couples who were trying to conceive. They found that there were no differences in likelihood to conceive in those who had been vaccinated.